When the spring equinox hits, our world is plunged out of a feeling of death and decay into an innocently new and warm feeling. Suddenly, most of us feel our guards come down along with our previously hunched shoulders. The warm breezes pull us out of our houses to find what new experiences this sudden warm spell has brought with it. The parks in our cities and towns suddenly fill up with people seeking new sights and sounds; Our favorite restaurants and businesses are suddenly overrun with customers seeking to taste or experience something new. How wonderfully and naturally inspiring it is that at the end of a long stretch of cold and dark days waits a season of kaleidoscopic colors, sweet fragrances, and the songs of wildlife that each and all compel us to experience something we have not previously. 

In this season of rebirth, our fledgling newsletter is likewise blossoming. Since late last year, Art Grove has been in a period of strategizing that is aimed at growing our little project into something a bit more than an ad-hoc MailChimp campaign about artists around the U.S. Publicly speaking, that process began with releasing our Mission Statement, which we wrote about in our January 2024 issue. It was an admittedly small but crucial step to make because it once and for all declared the purpose of this project. More importantly, it was a prerequisite to what came next.

Obtaining fiscal sponsorship was another goal we mentioned in our January 2024 issue. As of this month, we are delighted to announce that Art Grove Newsletter has achieved that goal, finally obtaining fiscal sponsorship through The Field in early March. What does this mean? Well, crucially, it means we can now legally begin fundraising for Art Grove and using those funds to grow the organization into an officially recognized 501(c)3, which, to be sure, is still a ways away. 

However, the unlocking of this capability for our organization cannot be underscored enough. For one thing, fundraising will allow us to begin upgrading some of the tools we use to create the newsletter that will both enhance user experience and lead to a higher-quality product. But more importantly (sorry, dear reader), fundraising even just a small sum will allow us to finally begin paying our writers.

Compensation for our contributors is central to our mission. Not only are the articles we publish meant to be about artists, but they are themselves meant to be a form of artistic expression for the writer. As a writer myself, I can attest to just how difficult it is to get your unique voice shared with a wide audience, let alone get paid for doing it. Fair compensation for our contributors thusly sits at the heart of our fundraising goals. We hope to launch this endeavor by the summertime to begin paying writers for their work as soon as possible.

In the interim, we continue to publish the work of extremely talented and generous volunteer-based writers. This month, our newsletter sees the writings of two such people –– both named Sarah and both tackling the broad concept of inter- and multi-disciplinary artmaking. The first comes from San Antonio-based nonfiction writer and poet Sarah Gill, whose discussion of the creative freedom found in self-exploration focuses on visual artist and musician Svetlana Zwetkof and her use of organic materials in art making. The second comes from Sarah Daniels, a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist known for her beautiful soprano voice, who argues for seeing oneself as a multi-faceted artist through experiences rather than solely through one’s craft. Our feature this month addresses similar issues through the story of Bay Area-based multi-disciplinary artist Chanel Kim and her projects that deal with survival and liberation through self-exploration.

This month’s issue is probably our most “out there” yet. The theme of inter- and multi-disciplinary artmaking is extremely open-ended as is, let alone when multiple writers are attempting to make sense of it for a unifying project. That left us with a lot of different ideas and schools of thought to fit together with one another while still making sense and offering something of substance to our readers. When we were planning this month’s issue, its contents and the aforementioned growth strategy were two completely disparate subjects of planning. But here at the end of the tunnel, as I sit and review all this month’s amazing work, I am a bit shocked by the way it all connects. 

These past few months have been trying for myself, and many others, it seems. Between a case of COVID-19, the woes of a day job, and adopting a puppy, things have been a bit ceaseless.  And to be frank, the culmination of all those things at the tail end of this recently passed winter season took the wind out of my sails a bit. It was a period during which I underwent a creative dearth. I hadn’t been feeling very inspired in the months of January and February, and because I am an artist, both my work ethic and mental health took a correlating dip. 

But then… suddenly –– whoosh –– in came this burst of chlorophyll and warm weather that seemed to reanimate me as much as it did the world around me. Where before, I was spending weeks at a time inside the comfort of my home, suddenly I couldn't stand the thought of spending another moment away from my beloved city of Richmond. I found myself engaging with a laundry list of wildly inspiring (and some galvanizingly bad) experiences that I had been lacking the enjoyment of for weeks.

Most inspiring and noteworthy include a workshop at Quarry, a community center on Cary Street, which involved learning how to dissolve firearms into iron phosphate for making iron gall ink. The other is more or less Art Grove’s first foray into real-world community engagement. Myself and Creative Director Betsy Podsiadlo attended a reverse arts job fair at Virginia Commonwealth University this past month, and met a huge number of incredibly talented students. The overwhelming skill and passion of these students, as well as the support we were given by Danielle Pearles at VCU (which for ethical reasons, I ought to divulge is my alma mater), was nothing short of incredibly inspiring. Both of these new experiences left me feeling even more hopeful for this project and its potential for contributions to the arts world than ever before.

All art, at the end of the day, is the byproduct of our desperate attempt to make unparalleled lived experiences something shareable with others. And if we choose to hide from new experiences, or ignore our unparalleled lived experiences, our ability to make art suffers in the process. Often, when we get stuck in a rut or feel a lack of inspiration, it is because we have grown too comfortable with what we already know. So, as we continue to march into the spring of 2024, I encourage you to use this time to experience as much as you can. A truly great artist acknowledges the challenge that it can be to notice, examine, and harness new experiences, but is not hindered and instead motivated by that challenge.

Tootle-oo, for now,

Tom Jakob, Managing Editor